


what makes a human

by CreepE



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-12
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-08-08 06:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7746292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreepE/pseuds/CreepE
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ginko investigates a village where the inhabitants begin mysteriously losing their emotions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what makes a human

It’s nearing winter and Ginko is packing up to go, hefting his pack higher on his back, when Adashino speaks.

“You know… I think there’s something strange happening in a village deep in the mountains. I don’t know if it has anything to do with _mushi_ , but it might be worth checking out.”

Ginko turns back to Adashino, one brow arched in curiosity. He knows Adashino hears the news from villages all over thanks to his profession, but he generally mentions stuff like this earlier on in the conversation. In this particular instance, however, Adashino seems almost reluctant to speak about it.

“Even if it’s not _mushi_ , I won’t get angry,” Ginko says, wondering if that’s what Adashino wants to hear. “It’s my job to check on anything that may seem unusual. Sometimes confirming that it’s not _mushi_ helps.”

There’s a beat, a pause in the air as Adashino considers what to tell Ginko. Hm, that’s even odder. Adashino is forthcoming on most things relating to _mushi_ , especially since Ginko gets appreciative enough to bring back _mushi_ -related items when Adashino gives him cases.

“Well, my patient asked me to pass the message on to you, but I’m still not sure what to make of it,” Adashino finally says with a small sigh. Ginko, hearing the beginnings of a story in Adashino’s voice, sets his pack down and settles in cross-legged on Adashino’s floor, motioning for Adashino to go on as he lights a cigarette.

“He was here a few weeks ago, so I have no idea if the situation has changed, but he brought his daughter in to see me because she was acting strange and the doctor in his village refused to do anything.”

“Refused?” Ginko asks, blowing a white cloud into the air with a frown. Weren’t village doctors obligated to help any patient that came to them?

“Yes, you heard correct. I couldn’t believe it at first either, but it makes some sort of sense when you hear the rest of the story. The man—his name was Hachiro—left his family to take some work over the mountains, since his village’s economy was suffering. He wanted to make money not just for his family, but also to help the other people. Hachiro’s a skilled builder… Have you never heard of him?”

“I haven’t,” Ginko mutters, wondering why Adashino expects him to keep up with the gossip around the world.

“You should really give some thought to people instead of just _mushi_.” _Like Adashino could talk._ “But, anyway, he left for six months to build a home for a feudal lord, who paid him handsomely. He came back to his village leaping with joy, expecting the villagers to be eagerly awaiting his return, but what he found shocked him. In a village that was usually filled with happiness even when times were rough, not a single person seemed happy to see him. In fact, they didn’t seem to care about anything at all.

“Hachiro asked around, but the villagers acted as if he were strange for caring or thinking there was something wrong. To them, the behaviour they exhibited was completely normal.”

Ginko studies the cloud of smoke obscuring the ceiling, trying to picture a happy village becoming listless and somber. He’s seen it happen when _mushi_ cause tragic events or the crop’s been bad and there’s nothing to do for winter, but for people to become indifferent for no reason… It doesn’t sound like _mushi_ Ginko’s heard of, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a _mushi_.

“Hachiro’s daughter was acting the same way, but when he brought it up to his wife she didn’t care at all. The village doctor even refused to look at her, saying there was nothing wrong. That was when he decided to come to this village—to ask me to look at his daughter and to see if I knew of any _mushishi_ that could help.”

“And this happened a few weeks ago?”

“Yes. But that isn’t the strangest part. The strangest part is that after a few days, his daughter began to grow happy again. I couldn’t understand it, not the indifference or the happiness, but Hachiro was overjoyed and thought it boded well for the rest of the village. I told him to contact me after he got back to let me know how things were, but I haven’t received any correspondence.”

So this was why Adashino was so reluctant to bring it up—it could simply be a case of a man forgetting to contact him. However, Ginko still wants to know what caused the problem in the first place, so he decides to go check the village out anyway. He explains this to Adashino, who asks him to come back and report his results, then slides his pack onto his shoulders for a second time. This time, he continues on his way uninterrupted, slowly meandering back into the mountain.

\---

When Ginko gets to the village Adashino told him about, he knows immediately that something’s wrong. It seems like it was once a nice place; there are gardens in front of many of the houses, there’s a main road that branches off into forest paths, the houses are a moderate but nice size, and there’s a well in the village’s center. However, what used to be nice has fallen into obvious disrepair as if no one has looked after it in months.

The gardens are overgrown with weeks, which choke out what little flowers still survive and make everything a dull jade with no other colours to brighten it. The paths also have straggly weeds reaching up through dusty cracks, and it’s quite obvious no one’s been trampling them down to go for a walk to take in the scenery. The thatched roofs of houses have holes in them, letting sun and rain alike in, and the well’s covering is removed to allow anything or anyone to accidentally wander into it.

Ginko lifts a hand to block the sunlight from blinding his eye and studies the village from his vantage point above, wondering if there’s even anyone living here anymore. If Ginko had been a simpler traveller looking for shelter, he might’ve moved on from this place that carries a haunted, lonely feeling to it. Instead, he moves down the mountain, keeping his eye out for _mushi_.

There’s a surprisingly dense population of _mushi_ around, but he can’t see anything unusual that could cause people to lose their emotions. Most—if not all—of the _mushi_ he sees are harmless, living in a symbiotic relationship with the natural flora and animal life surrounding the village. Still, the fact that there’s this many make him suspicious. There’s no reason for _mushi_ to congregate here.

When he gets to the bottom of the mountain and steps into the village, he begins to see some signs of life. In one window, he sees movement, and he quickly turns toward it in case it’s someone trying to stealthily sneak a peak at a stranger. He needn’t have worried; the woman looking out the window isn’t even looking at him. She’s studying her garden with a curious blankness, one small hand at her chin.

He watches her as he walks by the house, waiting for her to notice him, but if she does she doesn’t seem to care. Her eyes never leave the garden, and she never loses her contemplative pose. Ginko forces himself onward, wanting to see who else he can find before he goes in to bother her. The further into village he gets, the weirder things are. Not all windows have people looking out of them, but a lot do, and Ginko would hazard a guess that the ones that don’t have people within the house.

In the center of the village, Ginko stops by the well and looks down to see if there’s any _mushi_ species in the water that could be poisoning people. When he stands right over the well, he ends up stumbling backwards and trying not to retch from the scent. The sickly sweet scent of decay radiates from the water far below, where he just managed to catch a glimpse of a squirrel that must’ve gotten trapped after falling in. He doesn’t know how long it’s been in there, but judging from the scent and the state of decay, it’s been a while.

How have these people been surviving all this time with their water source contaminated?

“Excuse me,” a small, emotionless voice says from behind Ginko, and he jumps a bit, turning to see a tiny girl holding a bucket in both of her arms. Ginko moves out the way, watching her, and then almost spits out his cigarette when she attaches the bucket to the rope above the well and starts lowering it.

“That water’s undrinkable,” Ginko points out, slightly horrified that she didn’t even notice the thick, cloying scent of death. The girl shrugs her shoulders, not even bothering to reply, and Ginko narrows his eye. This is certainly no common form of indifference—even the grimmest villagers he knew wouldn’t drink water like that.

“Hey… do you know a man named Hachiro?” Ginko asks, wondering where the man Adashino spoke of is. He should’ve sent a letter by now, letting Adashino know that things aren’t alright, and that the villagers are even drinking contaminated water. The girl tugs the rope, pulling her bucket up from its foul-smelling, watery depths, and Ginko can’t take it anymore. He walks over and grabs the rope so she can’t pull it anymore.

“Hello, I’m talking to you,” Ginko says, leaning over to stare her right in the face. As he does, he searches her eyes and then leans around to look in her ears to see if there’s any _mushi_ hanging around. The only thing that he thinks could cause similar symptoms would be a _Kagedama_ , since they bury in a person’s brain and can’t be seen, but a _Kagedama_ eating memories doesn’t explain the lack of emotion.

“Hachiro is my father,” the girl sighs, looking right through Ginko as if there’s something interesting on the other of his head. Ginko is about to ask her to bring him to Hachiro when he sees the smallest strand of light curling near the back of her ear, and he reaches out gently to hold her hair away from the back of her neck. She doesn’t so much as blink while he does it, but Ginko’s reaction is startled enough for the both of them.

A tiny _mushi_ resembling a jellyfish has tentacle-like strands of light wrapped around the back of her neck, and as he watches it seems to draw something from her and pulse with it. He knows this type of _mushi_ , but it doesn’t make any sense for one of them to be on a human.

This was a _Happītorēdā_ , a rare type of _mushi_ that liked to live deep in the forest. It was supposed to be harmless, and like many other _mushi_ in tuned to the local flora, it lived in a symbiotic relationship with the forest. It absorbed energy from thriving plants through its tentacle-like appendages, which made it pulse with the same type of light it pulsed with now on the girl’s neck. Then it floated off to a dying plant and transferred the energy to that one. That way, no one plant could become so great that it stole the nutrients of all the others, and no one plant would become so weak that it would die.

Ginko reaches out to prod the _Happītorēdā_ with one finger, and the pulsing little _mushi_ suddenly detaches itself from the girl and goes floating languidly away. Ginko follows it with his eye, wondering if there’s some sort of plant that the _mushi_ thinks is important enough to steal human energy for, but the _mushi_ drifts down one of the overgrown paths and into the forest before Ginko can think to chase after it.

He stands, frowning thoughtfully after it, then turns to the young girl in front of him. She looks a little perkier now, but now much. Large, brown doe eyes are looking past him, focused on a spot that holds nothing.

“Can you take me to Hachiro?” Ginko prods, and the little girl seems to come back to herself for a second, her eyes focusing on Ginko with a snap.

“Okay,” she says agreeably, but then another _Happītorēdā_ drifts over and lands on her neck. Her eyes and mouth—which had just begun to turn up in a small smile—go slack, and she turns to wander away. Ginko follows her as she walks slowly on, and by the time she reaches a house that’s as worn-looking as the others, the sky is beginning to redden with twilight’s approach.

As the girl fiddles with the handle on the house’s sliding door, Ginko turns to look out over the village cast in a different light. It truly has the potential to be beautiful, and Ginko can imagine how it used to be. Along the road is a small mud trail he didn’t notice before, and it’s packed with tiny footprints as if children used to chase each other barefoot through the muck. In a few yards are apple trees rich with the succulent crimson fruits, and they shimmer seductively in the sun’s dying light. Ginko has a sudden longing to bite into one, and he walks through two yards to snag a couple.

When he comes back, the girl has gone into her house and left the door open. Ginko calls out a few times, but when no one comes to answer he excuses himself and walks right in. Immediately, he’s struck by the scent of unwashed bodies, almost as potent as the dead squirrel. He pulls a face, then reaches into his pack to fish out a handkerchief. Pressing it against his mouth and nose, he finds his way around the quickly darkening house to a bedroom, where a man is lying in a futon and a woman is sitting in a chair, staring at an open book.

“Excuse me,” Ginko calls, but neither of the adults react. The girl is sitting at the foot of the futon, her eyes half-closed as she pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her sleepy head on them. It’s as if Ginko’s walked into a frozen scene, one where something is just waiting to happen but never will.

Ginko picks his way over the floor, wincing at the amount of garbage. There’s apple peels all over, which only lend potency to the bad smell in the house, and in one corner is a bucket half-full of the water Ginko saw in the well. It makes him feel sick to his stomach, thinking about the fact that these people have been drinking that water. Ginko thanks his lucky stars that he brought some water with him.

When he reaches the futon, the man lying on it is exactly as Adashino described before Ginko had left; shorter and stocky, with dark hair, a small scar on his left cheek, and a friendly face. Well… not so much the friendly face part, but Ginko can see where the face could be friendly if it were smiling.

“Hachiro?” Ginko asks, and the man’s hazel eyes drift to then over Ginko. It wasn’t much of a reaction, but it was something, and coupled with Adashino’s description, this has to be the man. Yet he’s just as listless as the rest of the villagers, not a hint of the earlier desperation Adashino had mentioned. No joy, no sorrow, no anger… it’s as if all the life has been sucked from him.

Ginko knows this is the work of a _mushi_ , but it’s still a little creepy. He wants to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible, and he doesn’t exactly want to spend the night in his place. With his mind made up, Ginko leaves Hachiro’s house and scouts around for a _Happītorēdā._ It doesn’t take long; he sees one of them bobbing gently above a hole in one of the thatched roofs, and he sets out to follow it.

It goes down the same path the first one had gone down, and Ginko picks his way over roots and weeds to follow it. When he gets to the forest, he’s surprised to see how well-kept it is; the branches are cut away from the path, there’s not a single weed, and even the leaves have been swept away. Whoever’s maintaining this path obviously doesn’t want someone knowing they’re here, since they let the main path from the village grow over.

Ginko follows the _Happītorēdā_ deeper into the forest, darkness beginning to shroud the place. The only thing lighting his way soon is _mushi_ and the occasional firefly, but Ginko’s always been able to see better than most in the dark. The flickering shadows that could be hiding anything don’t scare Ginko much, since he knows that the majority of things hiding in the dark are just as scared of you as you are of them, if not more.

By the time Ginko sees a light in the distance, the sun is completely gone. Ginko ignores the slow-moving _Happītorēdā_ now to go see who the light belongs to, and when he gets to the clearing housing a cozy little cabin he’s floored. _Mushi_ are everywhere, bobbing around the roof, shooting past windows, twisting in the large tree next to the cabin. There are a huge variety, many _Happītorēdā,_ but many other types of _mushi_ as well _._ This can only mean one thing.

“Anybody home?” Ginko calls, knocking on the door. He knows full well that it’s late, but this place is perhaps the only welcoming place in the neighbourhood. The door cracks open a little to reveal a tiny old man, his hair as white as Ginko’s and his face as wrinkled as old leather. He seems shocked to see another human being—under these circumstances, Ginko can understand completely—and he squints at Ginko suspiciously.

“Who are you?” the old man questions with a frown, looking Ginko up and down. He seems to relax marginally as he takes in Ginko’s appearance. “A _mushishi_ , then?”

“Yes. My name is Ginko. I’m sorry it’s late, but a friend of mine mentioned a strange phenomenon occurring around here and I thought it sounded like it could be the work of a _mushi_. I was investigating in village, but it’s a rather eerie place.”

“Ginko, you say? My name’s Seichii. I’m also a _mushishi_ , although I don’t leave this place much anymore. Yes, I understand your concerns about the village—those people are all unnerving, always staring off into space like that. Why don’t you come in and we can talk about your investigation?”

Ginko agrees gratefully, entering Seichii’s cabin and letting out a small sigh of relief as he drops his heavy pack on the ground.

“Do you mind?” he asks, waving a cigarette. Seichii smiles, shaking his head, looking nostalgic.

“Of course not. _Mushi_ tobacco, eh? Brings back memories,” Seichii laughs, his entire face lighting up with mirth. It’s pleasant to see someone so full of life after a day of seeing lifeless, masklike expressions. For a while, before asking about his investigation, Seichii prompts Ginko for some of his best stories. The old man must be lonely, Ginko muses, and he doesn’t mind swapping _mushishi_ stories. Sitting on tatami mat with only a small, flickering candle and glowing _mushi_ to light the room, Ginko and Seichii trade stories long into the night. It’s nice to talk with someone who understands you completely.

“…and it turned out to be a _Nise-Kazura_ causing the whole thing, from the dead coming back to the bridge,” Ginko finishes, and Seichii’s eyes sparkle, impressed at how the story had turned out. It wasn’t a happy ending, really—many stories involving _mushi_ were a mix of happy and sad—but it was a story nonetheless.

“Truly amazing, the powers _mushi_ hold,” Seichii says, sipping on the tea he’d begun brewing halfway through their storytelling. As the night wore on, he became more and more animated, and Ginko found he was actually having a lot of fun.

“Indeed. Speaking of _mushi_ powers, have you noticed the _Happītorēdā_? They’re the ones causing all the problems in the village. I’ve seen a bunch around your cabin, and I imagine they’re all congregating at the powerful, old tree just outside.”

“Truly?” Seichii asks after a beat, and Ginko is a little confused. They’re quite obvious _mushi_ , especially since they’re such a rare sight. The old man seems sharp, but perhaps he’s seen so many _mushi_ in his lifetime that even rare ones don’t hold his attention. Ginko nods solemnly, and the old man claps both hands together excitedly.

“Wonderful, wonderful! _Happītorēdā_ don’t like the heat, so that means they’ll likely go away later this summer!”

Ginko had never heard any such thing, but then he hasn’t been a _mushishi_ for as long as Seichii. Ginko wants to pursue the topic a little more, but Seichii seems to consider the case closed and he prompts Ginko for more stories. They spend the rest of the night on a lot of tea and very little sleep, trading more stories. Ginko learns a lot he never knew, about how you can repel iron-fearing _mushi_ with blood, how there’s a difference between the local flora _mushi_ in the mountains and the plains despite them sharing many common characteristics, how you can tell for sure whether a sickness is caused by a certain _mushi_ or whether it’s just a sickness… things that like that.

“Are you going to be travelling again when summer comes?” Ginko asks near dawn. “The _mushi_ are all congregating here with you around.”

“Oh, of course,” Seichii assures him. “As soon as I confirm the fact that the _Happītorēdā_ are gone, I’ll move on again.”

Finally, the sun begins to filter through the window, and Ginko says he has to go. Seichii seems sad but says he understands, and they part ways. Ginko leaves the village to Seichii and briefly delivers a report to Adashino before leaving on another case.

\---

It’s coming on fall of the next year when Ginko finishes visiting Adashino and decides to drop by Seichii’s place again. He follows the same path he took last time, standing to look out onto the village. He fully expects to see it thriving the way it should, and he’s shocked to find that it’s in even worse shape than he left it.

The houses are leaning against each other for support now, many of the rooves completely caved in. The lawns are overgrown completely, and the weeds that been green last time he’d visited are now dead from lack of water. The road is almost completely overgrown, nature already claiming back what had once belonged to it, and the well in the center of the village has crumbled away to only a hole in the ground.

Ginko is quick this time, no longer picking his way down the mountain. When he reaches the bottom, he runs to the house Hachiro was in last time, wasting no time in knocking. Not that it matters; the door is open as if it has been for a while, and there are animals feasting on the remains of rotting food. The stench of the village is putrid, overcome with a heavy rot, and Ginko fears the worst.

What he finds isn’t the worst, but it’s damn near close. Hachiro, his wife, and his daughter are in almost the exact same spots they’d been in last time, but now they’ve lost a ton of weight. They look almost skeletal, laying their dispassionately, and Ginko can barely stand the sight of the little girl’s head lolling on her shoulders, her hair matted into greasy clumps and bedsores all over her body. She doesn’t even seem to realize she should be in pain.

Ginko hurries over to her first, giving her some of the water he’d brought with him, then he gives some to Hachiro and Hachiro’s wife. He notices _Happītorēdā_ leaving their necks as he does, and he can’t understand why this is happening. Even if the _Happītorēdā_ were trying to gather life for the tree, they wouldn’t keep taking from weak people like this. If anything, they’d be trying to bring more life to these people.

Why hadn’t Seichii come to make sure these people were alright? Unless…

Ginko practically runs to Seichii’s house, anger making his chest tight at the sight of the clean path leading there. If anything had happened to Seichii, the path should be as overgrown as the rest of the village, or slightly less so. This path is so well looked after that it’s clearly been tended to almost every day.

“Ginko?” a familiar voice asks as Ginko stumbles into the clearing, breathing hard. The old _mushishi_ is standing in front of his tree, looking up at the _Happītorēdā_ around it. Ginko can’t believe it. How could a _mushishi_ forsake an entire village just for a tree? The tree isn’t even all that impressive; it’s old, twisted, and gnarled, its branches reaching aggressively for the sky. The leaves have already fallen off of it, making it look ugly and bare, and it's so foreboding-looking that even animals haven’t made their nests there.

“Why have you left the villagers like that?” Ginko pants, his eye hard with anger. He just doesn’t understand at all. “They’re practically dead!”

“Ah, so you’ve seen that, then,” Seichii says sadly, and reaches a hand into the air as if waiting for a bird to perch on it. What perches on it isn’t a bird though—instead, it’s a _Happītorēdā._ Its light appendages wrap around Seichii’s finger, and Seichii seems to get just a little sadder as the _Happītorēdā’s_ pulses slow. Ginko can’t believe his eyes, but suddenly everything makes sense. The _Happītorēdā_ haven’t been collecting emotions for the tree at all. They’ve been collecting them for the old _mushishi_ , who had lied to Ginko about _Happītorēdā_ not liking the heat.

“Why?” Ginko asks again, this time a little steadier. He understands the situation now, but he still doesn’t understand why it’s happening. Seichii lets the _Happītorēdā_ from his hand drift away before turning his sorrowful dark eyes on Ginko.

“You’re just a young _mushishi_ , so you don’t understand yet,” Seichii sighs. He seems to be warring with himself internally, as if wondering how much to tell Ginko. Whatever battle he was fighting wins out in Ginko’s favour, because Seichii gestures for Ginko to follow him into the cabin before turning to disappear into it himself.

Ginko hesitates for a second, then lights a cigarette so the _mushi_ tobacco will keep the _Happītorēdā_ away. When he gets into the house, he keeps his pack with him and eyes Seichii suspiciously as he takes a seat on the familiar tatami mat. He doesn’t know what to do or say, so he settles with blowing out white clouds and waiting for Seichii begin. After a time, he does.

“When I was just a young _mushishi_ , I wandered into a forest and happened upon hundreds of _Happītorēdā._ I was enraptured and thrilled by them, the ultimate balancers of the forest. Like you, I was in the habit of taking on cases and helping villages out, but the _Happītorēdā_ interested me so much that I spent a year in that place, studying them. By the time the year was up, I knew so many things about _Happītorēdā_ that I could fill a book with them. One of those things was how to control them.”

Ginko can’t quite describe his feelings on this; on one hand, he’s impressed with Seichii’s dedication to studying the jellyfish-like _mushi_ , but on the other hand he’s slightly disgusted that anyone would try to control _mushi_. They’re a part of nature, and they’re meant to be left to their own devices unless they’re harming people. Ginko’s job is to help keep the balance, so hearing about someone trying to use the power of _mushi_ repels him.

“I can see what you’re thinking, young one, but hear me out. After all, that cigarette you’re smoking is made of tiny _mushi_ you’re more or less controlling, is it not?”

Ginko finds he had no clever answer to that, so he elects to say nothing, waiting for Seichii to finish his story.

“I didn’t use that knowledge for a long, long time. I didn’t think I ever would. But as time went on and I took on more cases, I found myself becoming more and more apathetic. Despite the people I saved and the villages I helped, was I actually changing anything? _Mushi_ would always exist, and so my job as a _mushishi_ was simply a never-ending cycle of the same thing. Sometimes I helped, sometimes I didn’t, but in the end, was the world any better or worse off?

Those thoughts played through my head continuously, and I began to lose faith in myself and what I was doing. I tried to keep it up for the smiles on people’s faces, but after a while—after watching so many more people suffer than be happy—I started distancing myself from it. By the end, I was just as indifferent to the world as all the people in that village are.”

As Ginko listens, he begins to find himself growing uncomfortable. How many times has he had the exact same thoughts, as a _mushishi_? How many cases has he taken that have ended badly? Sometimes he thinks he really isn’t making much of a difference.

“Desperate to gain back that spark I had when I was younger, I began searching for a way to cure my lack of caring. At first, I tried becoming more social and staying around people, but that always led to _mushi_ being attracted to where I was, so I always had to move on. I found other _mushishi_ and befriended them, but we’re solitary creatures by nature so I never ended up sticking with anyone. Eventually, I felt that the only thing I could turn to were _mushi_ themselves, and with my knowledge on how to control the _Happītorēdā_ … well, I decided to try it out.

At first, it was just a little bit of happiness here and there to get me through, but eventually I realized I wanted it all back. Happiness, anger, even sadness… I missed those emotions. But getting all of them back would take time and an entire village’s worth of emotions, which is why I set up here. A few weeks later, I felt better than I had in years. Then you showed up and, well… you know the rest.”

“But how could you leave them like that?” Ginko bursts out, his thoughts flickering back to the little girl. “They’re dying!”

“No,” Seichii says, studying his wrinkled old hands with despair. “I look after them. I make sure they’re not dying. I weep for them every day, and they’re constantly in my thoughts. But don’t you see… my feeling this way is good! I care about this village!”

Ginko has heard enough, and he stand so he towers over the older _mushishi_. Ginko may have had similar thoughts, but he would never do this to an entire town, no matter how apathetic he grew.

“Your having emotions is not worth an entire village’s life,” Ginko says grimly. “How could you think that you’re more important than all of them?”

“I’ve saved hundreds, if not thousands, of people!” Seichii yells, springing to his feet. “Do I not deserve to be filled with emotions at the end? Is my reward for saving everyone living this horrible, non-caring life?”

Ginko levels Seichii with a glare.

“As _mushishi_ , we’re not in it for a reward. Not for money, not for our own happiness, not even for the happiness of an entire village. We exist on the fringes between humanity and _mushi_ , and we’re just as much a part of nature as the plants, trees, and air. We’re not meant to seek rewards; we’re only meant to do as nature intends us to.”

“You’re already talking like something not human!” Seichii shrieks. “The way you are now, you may as well be a _mushi_!”

Ginko doesn’t know how to respond to that, because in a way it’s true. He has no real memories of a human life, so he may as well be a _mushi_. However, in his mind, it’s better to be a _mushi_ than a monster.

He reaches into the bottom drawer of his pack and pulls out some sage, something he knows for a fact is a natural repellent of _Happītorēdā._ As he burns it, waving it around Seichii’s cabin and scattering the _Happītorēdā_ back to the mountain, Seichii sobs and sobs until his tears dry up. After an hour, when Ginko has finally cleared all the _Happītorēdā_ from around the house, Seichii is still sitting on the tatami mat. But now he’s looking out the window, and when Ginko tries to speak to him he waves an indifferent hand towards Ginko.

“I’ll clear out first thing in the morning,” Seichii says in an inflectionless tone. Ginko leaves, wondering why so many of his cases end up feeling like losses, even when he’s managed to complete them.

\---

He does a few more cases before heading back to Adashino’s. Adashino, of course, wants to hear all about Ginko’s case with the _Happītorēdā_ since he just received a letter from Hachiro a few weeks ago saying that things are much better. Somehow, this case has hit closer to home than most, but Ginko gives it to Adashino. An abridged version of it, anyway.

When he’s finished, Adashino remains silent for a long time, digesting it. He’s one of the few people who can tell when Ginko’s feeling down, and Ginko can see the question in Adashino’s eyes when he looks at Ginko.

Ginko waits a while, puffing idly on his _mushi_ tobacco before asking the question that’s been on his mind since he’d finished the case.

“Do you think I actually make a difference in the world, doing these cases?”

Adashino’s eyes gleam as if he’s been waiting for this question for a while, and Ginko wonders if Adashino is about to deliver some long, rambling reason on why and how he makes a difference in the world. But then they’re interrupted as a tiny little girl with sweet doe eyes throws the door open and runs into the room giggling.

“Aya?” Adashino asks, and the girl throws her arms around Adashino, hugging him tight.

“Thank you, Dr. Adashino,” she says, and Adashino looks more disgruntled than usual at being hugged by a little girl. Then she turns to Ginko, and Ginko is a little surprised that there’s a spark of recognition in her eyes. She points at Ginko excitedly, eyes sparkling with childish joy.

“You’re him! You’re the _mushishi_ that saved our village! Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

It’s Ginko’s turn to be disgruntled when she wraps her tiny arms around his shoulders, yet he finds himself chuckling at her childish exuberance. She seems like a handful, but in the best way possible.

“Aya, there you are!” a man calls out, and a friendly face with a scar on the left cheek peers through the door. The girl shrinks down as if ashamed, but she doesn’t lose her toothy (minus one or two teeth) grin. “I told you to wait until Dr. Adashino was finished with his visitor. Come on out here, little monkey.”

The girl giggles again, high and sweet, then runs from the room to join Hachiro. Ginko turns to raise an eyebrow at Adashino, who’s looking after the girl with a smirk.

“I guess she just couldn’t wait to meet you,” Adashino sighs with a shrug, eyes turning up to follow Ginko’s _mushi_ tobacco as it mushrooms across the ceiling and fades away. “The entire family is out there, waiting to thank you.”

“I don’t ask to be thanked,” Ginko points out. Still, he feels warm that he helped contribute to the little girl and her parents getting better. Even though he said he doesn’t do it for a reward, he’s still happy when people are saved in the end. He still cares about the villagers he saves, it seems.

“To answer your previous question, I don’t know,” Adashino says, startling Ginko out of his thoughts. “I don’t know whether you make a difference to the entire world or not. The world is an awfully large place. But if there’s one thing I do know, it’s this; you make a difference to the people you save. And, really, isn’t that enough?”

Ginko thinks about this, watching his cloud of _mushi_ tobacco drift up, up, and away, out into the world to be free. And he smiles.

 


End file.
